Gawker responds to Quentin Tarantino lawsuit

January 28th, 2014

Gawker claims it was Quentin Tarantino himself who turned his leaked script for 'The Hateful Eight' into a news story.

The Oscar-winning 'Django Unchained' director decided to pull the plug on the proposed cowboy film last week when details of the plot emerged, and is now suing the website which made it widely available on the internet.

Gawker's John Cook has spoken out about the lawsuit claiming the famed filmmaker generated media attention when he spoke to Deadline.com about it.

He wrote on Gawkwer.com: ''Last week - before the publication of the script online but after it had begun circulating in Hollywood - Tarantino loudly turned 'The Hateful Eight' leak into a topic of intense news interest by speaking about it at length to Deadline Hollywood, which had itself obtained a copy.

''Tarantino's very public complaints about the leak - which named the six parties (of varying degrees of celebrity and potential culpability) that he believes had access to it - were picked up and amplified afterwards by dozens of news sites, including Defamer. It was Tarantino himself who turned his script into a news story, one that garnered him a great deal of attention.''

The director is demanding at least $1 million in damages for Gawker's actions. The site was not the original source of the script leak, but Quentin blames them for making it available to the public, despite having said he was planning to publish it himself.

Quentin, 50, said he had only given the script for 'The Hateful Eight' to six people, including 'Reservoir Dogs' stars Michael Madsen and Tim Roth, veteran actor Bruce Dern and Reggie Hudlin, a producer on 'Django Unchained'. He stated he believes that one of them must have let their agent see it, who subsequently sent it on.